Welcome to the 2022-23 season preview as brought to you by Betway Sports. We’ll be taking a dive into each teams offseason and what their Stanley Cup odds are for next season from the worst odds to the best. All odds current as of the time of writing.
Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup Odds: +10000
What exactly are the Chicago Blackhawks doing here?
Sure, they want to go into a rebuild — that makes sense given the struggles en masse they’ve had the last few years. But instead of going from the top down, they seemingly have gone from the bottom up.
Instead of making guys like Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane some of the players they’ve shipped out, they made moves to trade both Alex DeBrincat and Kirby Dach two of their young and up-and-coming forwards.
In the DeBrincat trade, they seemingly sold low only getting a first and second-round pick in this past years draft, and a 3rd round pick in 2024. They went off the board a bit with that seventh overall pick this year taking defenceman Kevin Korchinski, a guy they said they coveted.
Then in Dach’s case, they shipped him to Montreal in exchange for the 13th overall pick and a 3rd round pick, 66th overall. That’s it for either of these guys? I’m surprised, to say the least.
Chicago also brought in Petr Mrazek and another first-round pick later in the first round in exchange for a second-round pick. Mrazek should help in their attempts to tank this year, but who knows! Maybe he comes in and plays great hockey.
You can maybe give them some credit for bringing in guys like Max Domi and Andreas Athanasiou on one-year deals, but only if they are able to trade them for assets at the deadline.
This was a weird offseason for first-year GM Kyle Davidson and co.
Are we betting on the Blackhawks to win the cup? No chance. They’ve made their team worse this offseason and are going to be well out of the playoff picture.